In the movie "IQ", they showed Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau) sailing on Carnegie Lake in Princeton. That is one of the worst places in the world to sail. Or windsurf for that matter. Now, rowing is a different subject altogether.

Tillerman, seems like I have more in common with you every time you mention New Jersey. As easy as it is to call it Lake Carnegie, it is in fact called Carnegie Lake. In the early 70's, every year just before Thanksgiving, there used to be a Penguin regatta on the lake called the "Gobbler Bowl". We would drift around for hours Saturday morning, pretending to race, choose a winner, and then go to Palmer Stadium to watch the Princeton Tigers play football. I thought it was strange that there was a college named after toothpaste.

Cooper River is also a quirky place to sail. My Dad and I did very well there a few times. The last regatta in 1972, we had our dachshund sleeping in the boat the whole regatta. We won. Good memories. Did you ever sail Packanac Lake?

Baydog, seems like I have more in common with you every time you mention New Jersey. As easy as it is to call it Packanac Lake, it is in fact called Packanack Lake. I have done better than sail there; I have actually run a regatta there.

In a previous existence I was kind of the godfather for junior Sunfish sailing in North Jersey. Every year I organized a series of junior regattas at various lakes. One year the folks at Packanack Lake volunteered to host one of the regattas (or maybe I twisted their arms a bit to do it.) They provided a small motor boat as race committee boat but I seem to remember that I ended up more or less in charge of the race committee too.

What an amazing lake! I wouldn't have believed it possible to run sailboat races on it until I ended up having to do it.

Good for Doctor Laura. I guess a better question would be, "What celebs are average weekend sailors like you and me who just do it for fun and who rarely ever win (if they race at all) and who are not widely known as sailing celebrities?"

The point I am trying to make is that Doctor Laura and Walter Cronkite are in a different category from Ted Turner and Larry Ellison. And all the better for it.

I was missing the k. When I was young, I guaged Penguin regattas by the donut spread they had at registration. Packanack I remember was top-notch. I'll never forget what I did there. I was pretty young (9 or 10) and during the skippers' meeting, I took the Penguin out for a spin by myself and sailed straight into a moored boat. It left a nice chunk of wood missing from our bow but my Dad never blew his top over it. And he rarely missed blowing his top. That's the most clear memory of Packanack I have. Besides the donuts. Silly, huh?

Well, he built it and I helped. Then I sailed it, without his help. Except, he was aboard, the first time I raced it. A Penguin. I always thought of it as a Gull, but that is just what we named it. You totally described the floor boards - exactly the way it was.

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